aftr_ooc | TEST DRIVE MEME ( 012 )

Test Drive Meme #12

Hello, and welcome to LifeAftr! We’re pleased that you’re expressing an interest in the game. Here, you can test the waters, gauge how your character may fare in the world of LifeAftr, and even gain some in-game incentives, if you so choose.

Remember that Reserves will open on June 17th, and Applications on June 24th!

Two important notes:

1. LifeAftr's test drives take place on the island of Mu, which exists apart from the real world and possesses a dream-like quality that characters are innately aware of from the moment they appear on its shores. No need to panic or fret. Dreams are odd things, after all - and anything can happen in them. Why would anyone question where their mind chooses to wander in its sleep?

2. Due to the nature of Mu, threads in our test drive can not only be accepted as thread samples in your application, but can be accepted as game canon as well. In fact, certain choices your character makes in Mu have the potential to bear in-game consequences, largely in the form of test drive reward items.

There Goes the Neighborhood
Today, you're not merely waking up on an island. Oh, no. You're waking up in the world's most perfect suburb, complete with perfectly-trimmed lawns, white picket fences, and a uniformity that borders on the absurd. Not a fleck of paint is out of place, and not a blade of grass is out of line.

Mu has attempted to imitate the sort of fabricated happiness that adventurers dealt with in the month of May, but without the full power to shape fantasies to the whims of each individuals, has opted instead to attempt for a blanket, painfully generic alternative.

It's a cheap attempt to mimic something that was already a falsehood to begin with, rote and uncommitted. Thus, much of this world is patchworked with palpable holes, both visible and otherwise: neighbors are featureless specters performing daily routines with robotic precision, entire swathes of the neighborhood are perfect replicas of the same painfully generic family, and, of course, there's you.

You obviously don't belong here. The framework of the narrative is so structured that it's not hard to realize things are amiss. The more you think about it, the more it seems like this entire fantasy is deeply, deeply amiss.

But then again, maybe not. Maybe you buy into it, completely and utterly. Maybe you're so eager to escape whatever life you lived prior to this one that you're all too eager to live in this Stepford-esque facsimile. The degree to which your character adheres to this structured world, and how much they remember from their true life, is up to you.

Do it for the Vine
This next scenario is far from pleasant, though it is much more real. The thick, tropical woodland might be difficult to traverse at first, but don't worry - it's about to get much harder.

Do you like earthquakes? How about massive, twisting vines that swarm out from the undergrowth to attempt to snake up around your ankles and shins and root you in place, perhaps smother you in the dirt? Isn't it fortunate that you're being left to contend with both at once? Mu is compensating for the events of May, it seems; commemorating a god whose demise tore an island apart by mimicking with precision efficiency how that must have felt for everyone to bear dramatic witness.

The good news is that while the vines might be both eerily cunning and vast in number, they still are just plants, and plants can be easily pruned or burned. The subterranean rumbles of the ground as it cracks and ruptures underfoot might be less easy to contend with.

To that, our only suggest is simply to run. Good luck!

Taken for Granite
This particular brand of landscape is striped with cliffs and crags, a lifeless mountain range crooked along the horizon with rock the color of fired clay. And not far off from where you've stirred awake is...a rather eccentric rock formation.

By "eccentric", of course, we mean "moving". And by "moving" we mean "it is extricating itself from the ground like some unholy tectonic zombie and it's coming right at you RUN".

Formed entirely from an amalgamation of earth, rocks, ore, and valuable gems, the earth golem is surprisingly territorial for a glorified lump of mud. Approximately fifteen feet tall and half as wide, this lumbering creature has only one concern: the eradication of anything that steps into its territory. It is sensitive to vibrations in the ground, and is thus very difficult to hide from for those moving on foot. However, it is nearly blind and very stupid, preferring to wallop anything within reach using its massive, boulder-sized fists rather than employ any sort of strategy.

Still, unless you're looking to travel to the other side of the area via the Golem Express, avoiding this creature's warpath may be a wise choice. Especially given its talent at re-assembling itself upon destruction.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ He absolutely was catching some Z's this whole time, and he has 0 regrets, Papyrus. ZERO ]

Heh. Yeah, I guess they are acting pretty...off. [ He's really not sure how else to quantify the way they're all behaving, because he's pretty sure his bro wouldn't see it as 'Creepy' or 'Uncanny'. At least not to the same extent anyone else would. Him shouting compliments is proof enough of that.

Sans isn't even sure they're real humans? He doesn't know what else they would be, or why they would be here, but...yeah... ]

Maybe you should toss a puzzle or two their way? Might get them to snap out of, uh. Their obsessive lawn maintenance.

[ brother. brother why. ~~he knows exactly why, and yet, he still asks,~~

Papyrus accepts everyone's strange quirks of behaviour!! Even if they do nothing but mow their lawns in circles all day!! But it's still...strange? Not creepy, no, but strange. A monster shouting at them should have some response. Even acknowledging him for a bit, then going back to what they were doing, is a response! Getting no response is....throwing him off a bit, to be honest. And Papyrus doesn't like feeling thrown off. ]

Well!! The thing is!! I have tried that!! [ Presumably while Sans was taking a nap. Actually yeah that's probably when he did it. ] I have tried puzzles about gardening! And lawn care! Which seems very relevant to these humans' interests! And yet, they fail to respond in the slightest to my extremely clever and topical and hand-crafted brain-teasing experiences!!

[ HE HUFFS AND CROSSES HIS ARMS. ] But it seems like all they wish to do is walk around and mow lawns all day!

I am beginning to think that they don't even know what a puzzle is!!

[ Yep, that's the thing you should take away from this, Papyrus. That they don't know what puzzles are. ]

[ Sans takes a moment to think. It's a very short moment, mostly because he doesn't want Papyrus to catch on to the fact that he is, in fact, trying to think of some way to fix the situation. He has a reputation to uphold here. A very lazy reputation.

But reputation or not, he does want to try and make this less...of a troubling situation for his brother, so he puts in a little mental effort for the first time in a while.

Option one: Weekend at Bernies the situation. All he'd have to do is hide behind some people and move their arms around. Throw his voice a little to mime strangers. He's pretty sure Paps would fall for it. The downside is...well, it would be a lot of work for an indefinite amount of time. It really wouldn't be sustainable. He's exhausted just thinking about it.

Option two...eh. That's really all he's got for the moment. If they haven't responded to anything Papyrus has done, well, he doubts they can just be snapped out of their weird loops. ]

Maybe they don't. At least you can say you tried, right?

TEST DRIVE MEME ( 012 )

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